Blue post on lava burst and lightning damage

[Fuzzyboy]

"Now we think that Lava Burst is doing appropriate damage for its cost and if anything Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a little too good. (Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.) However, nerfing lightning would make it harder to level as well as making 3.0.2 kind of brutal for Elemental shamans, since Lava Burst is level 75. Hurting lightning would feel like a flat out nerf, and even though you'd partially make up for it at higher level, overall we think this would feel, um, yucky. So no big changes to lightning spells."

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=19788.0

To me, this sounds like lightning bolt is working as intended atm. I havent had a chance to test it myself yet, as my wotlk client is still patching. Any of the active beta users have any feedback on how well LB is wokring atm? Does it feel weaker than usual? Or isn't the coeff nerf all that noticable*?

[Niley]

its much weaker then on live, basically i can crit unbuffed for around 4500ish on live, yet on beta my best try, with all totems down, was just under 4k.
DPS is also weak, on live i do 2300 dps on average, on a fight like brutallus, on beta with flask/food etc etc and a moonkin/warlock in my group i barely broke 2200. Now that does sound like its almost the same...but then compare it to that offspec boomkin doing almost 3k, and a mage doing almost the same, and it seems weak.

[Alienenduro]

Fuzzy is that you in the avatar picture?

[Fuzzyboy]

Fuzzy is that you in the avatar picture?

Yeah, I'm too sexy!

No, it's George Costanza from Seinfeld from an episode of George flirting with the photo-shop-store girl

[gobtol]

Fuzzy is that you in the avatar picture?

It's George Costanza from Seinfeld. He took that picture so this girl at the photo place would see it when she developed his pics, but some big black guy developed them instead.

Edit: He beat me to it.

[Fuzzyboy]

its much weaker then on live, basically i can crit unbuffed for around 4500ish on live, yet on beta my best try, with all totems down, was just under 4k.
DPS is also weak, on live i do 2300 dps on average, on a fight like brutallus, on beta with flask/food etc etc and a moonkin/warlock in my group i barely broke 2200. Now that does sound like its almost the same...but then compare it to that offspec boomkin doing almost 3k, and a mage doing almost the same, and it seems weak.

Ack, that doesn't sound good. Lets hope they fix this - obviously we're not meant to do that little dps. In the post he mentioned including lava burst in the rotation, I'll test once the premades have been transferred to my account.

[Hor]

"(Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.)"

So, our damage is being limited based on having a warlock in the party? I'm confused. I thought that the point of a lot of these cross buff stacking nerfs was to encourage people to not HAVE to have a particular class in group/raid to be effective. This seems somewhat counterintuitive to me.

[Niley]

this is the best i could do, my gear isnt as good as live, and this was with 50/13/0 spec.
http://img523.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2400pp9.jpg
oh and this was with heroism...
This is my wws from last brutallus for compario:
http://wowwebstats.com/31oxqvdbf5gnq?s=162035-188422

[bodefeld]

"(Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.)"

So, our damage is being limited based on having a warlock in the party? I'm confused. I thought that the point of a lot of these cross buff stacking nerfs was to encourage people to not HAVE to have a particular class in group/raid to be effective. This seems somewhat counterintuitive to me.

I second that. Blizzard's Devs constantly point out the new benefit from CoE for shamans. It appears to me that they are so busy fine-tuning WotLK raid encounters that they have forgotten about the questing and solo play.

Plus, the shamans don't get lava burst until 75, which leaves us de facto nerfed till up to that point.

[Schwarz]

its much weaker then on live, basically i can crit unbuffed for around 4500ish on live, yet on beta my best try, with all totems down, was just under 4k.
DPS is also weak, on live i do 2300 dps on average, on a fight like brutallus, on beta with flask/food etc etc and a moonkin/warlock in my group i barely broke 2200. Now that does sound like its almost the same...but then compare it to that offspec boomkin doing almost 3k, and a mage doing almost the same, and it seems weak.

How does this work? I figure when 3.0 goes live I will gain ~500 spell damage (280ish from totem of wrath and 200ish from flame tonugue wep). I don't understand why the damage would be going down and not up. I would think moving from +1100 spell damage to +1600 spell damage would be a nice increas in dps. Apparently not huh.

What is your +spell damage on live vs ptr?